Noriko Isobe
Noriko Isobe (磯辺 典子, Isobe Noriko) is the tank commander and loader of the Duck Team and one of the supporting protagonists of Girls und Panzer. Profile Noriko is a second-year student from Ooarai Girls Academy. She is the team captain and setter of the school's defunct volleyball team. In addition, Noriko is also the commander of the Duck Team's Japanese Type 89B and helps serve as its loader. Noriko grew up in Ooarai, Ibaraki. She was first seen in the opening episode, viewing the Sensha-dō promotional video with the rest of Duck Team. She then attended the first meeting of the Sensha-dō club and voiced her concern that there were fewer people than she thought would have attended. When the teams split up to search for other tanks, she went looking in the hills and found a Type 89B in a cave embedded within the Cliffside. After being assigned to that tank, Duck Team then cleaned and fixed up the vehicle. During the free-for-all match against their own teammates, Duck Team had some minor problems getting to their starting location, mainly by running into trees. They fired the first shot of the match at Anglerfish Team, with the intention of disabling them first. They teamed up with the StuG III and pursued the Panzer IV to a bridge. Noriko waved at Caesar and Erwin as the two vehicles closed in on the bridge, and engaged Anglerfish Team with machine-gun and howitzer fire. However, the crew of the Panzer IV began returning fire, eliminating the Duck Team with what a visibly disoriented Noriko described as, "a head-on attack". Following their first battle, Duck Team painted volleyballs and slogans of encouragement on their tank, with Noriko commenting that it would be easier to tell everyone's tank apart from each other, failing to grasp that the original color schemes helped make the tanks less conspicuous. After participating in Momo Kawashima's training course she was visibly fatigued from the experience, however, she still attended the briefing on the battle against St. Gloriana later on in the evening. She expressed agreement with the original plan presented by Kawashima, but when Anzu proposed that Miho Nishizumi be the new captain, she supported the idea. She was also the one to question what would happen to Miho if they lost, and was visibly horrified to hear that she would be doing the Anko dance. Her finest moments would be when Noriko alongside Chi-Ha-Tan's team managed to eliminate several Pershing tanks during the Ooarai Compound Team vs. All-Stars University Match, despite being vastly outgunned and under armored. Appearance Noriko is a short girl with a short dark brown hair and a pair of dark brown eyes. Asides from the school's tankery uniform, she is always otherwise seen wearing spats and a T-shirt, in contrast to her teammates who wear the school's volleyball uniform. Along with the rest of Ooarai's Senshado team, she was forced to wear the school uniform "properly" by the Public Morals Committee in the 6th chapter of Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu, however, she still wore her Volleyball uniform underneath it. Due to her hair already being short and having a "normal" color, she was not forced to dye it, braid it or have it modified in any other way. When she infiltrated Anzio Girls High School to rescue Momo Kawashima, she wore an Anzio uniform to blend in with the students there. During the actual extraction, she wore tactical gear and wielded a P90. Personality Noriko Isobe's personality can best be described as being a very determined and fairly good-natured individual. Noriko's prime credo is exerting courage and willpower (this may be tied to her own consideration of her body size, which is significantly smaller than her teammates). She is very purposeful and determined to the point of stubbornness, firmly believing that willpower will overcome all obstacles. She also inspires tremendous loyalty from her teammates, who stick with Noriko despite the risks and dangers. In several derivative works, her and her team as a whole are usually joked as fulfilling the "dumb-jock" stereotype and being muscle brained as a whole. For example, when Duck Team joined up with Fukuda's tank to obstruct the barrel of a heavy tank, Noriko and her teammate Akebi Sasaki pushed against the wall of the tank, apparently believing that doing so would help bend the barrel more effectively, much to the chagrin of their driver, Shinobu Kawanishi. Other examples include diving into a swimming pool that had been drained of water, injuring herself and the rest of Duck Team. A fairly noticeable occurrence of this was when Noriko mistook a Tankathalon match for a beach volleyball tournament, with Shinobu gently reminding her that the season was already over. Despite this, Noriko is also shown to be a good commander, possessing tactical awareness, good judgment, and excellent leadership skills. Prime examples of this can be seen when she calms her team down whenever they panic, as well as giving clear instructions when her team finds themselves in an awkward position, such as when they were surrounded by Anzio's tankettes or when they unexpectedly came face to face with Saunders' flag tank. This allows Duck Team to be one of the best teams Ooarai has to offer, having the highest evasion and hit rates of the Ooarai teams. Trivia *Her favorite flower is Morning glory and her favorite tank is the U.S. M3 Stuart light tank. *She is the shortest member of her team, despite being a year ahead of the other three members. *Noriko Isobe bears a striking ressemblance with Sata Isobe, a Japanese volleyball player who was part of the national team when Japan won at the 1962 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Championships and in the Women's Volleyball Event of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics. This resemblance even goes down to Sata Isobe's attire in the 1964 Olympics. *In OVA 6, she does a pretty good imitation of all five of the members of Anglerfish Team. *In Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu! it is revealed that Noriko starts seeing balls whenever she stops playing volleyball for an extended period of time. Notably and most humorously, this involves her accidentally molesting her more well-endowed teammates via grabbing their busts. *Noriko believes that doing well in Sensha-dō will help resurrect the volleyball team. How she made this connection is currently unknown. *Highly agile, Noriko was able to hang onto the outside of the turret of the Type 89B when they were surprised by Alisa's Sherman and were performing evasive maneuvers. She also managed to continue to stand on the outside of the turret and "serve" flares at the pursuing Sherman. *Noriko's tank, and herself as an extension, is referred to as "Duck-dono" by Fukuda and other members of the Chi-Ha-Tan tank club. One obvious reason is that the tank crew as a whole is referred to as the Duck Team. This can also be attributed to the events that transpired when the two forces fought together during the Chi-Ha-Tan/Ooarai Compound vs. Pravda/St.Gloriana Compound match, as well as the Ooarai Compound vs. All-Stars University match. During the latter, they donned inflatable rubber ducks on their turrets, as a form of camouflage. **Fukuda also nicknamed her "Small Duck" due to her smaller figure compared to the rest of the Duck Team. *Noriko has an older brother. *In an untranslated MLLSD chapter she is mistaken as a boy by Hana's mother. Gallery Category:Characters Category:Anime Characters Category:Females Category:Polynymous Category:Duck Team Category:Loaders Category:Tank Commanders Category:Ooarai Girls' High School Category:Ribbon Warrior Characters Category:TemporaryCategory